The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-016 - ethnographic attestation

Wathi-wathi (Wadi-wadi) Kalari Burbung bullroarer

Australia - Murray River around Balranald - Tooleybuc - New South Wales

Restricted

Mathews' 1898 survey plate of Australian bull-roarers.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Mathews' 1898 survey plate of Australian bull-roarers. · Public domain Image source

Kalari English

Kalari: Wathi-wathi name for the bullroarer whirled by a concealed man at the Burbung (initiation); no literal meaning recorded. Howitt's 1904 condensation prints it Kalar; the neighbouring Ta-ta-thi called the same instrument Kalk, 'word'.

When enough Wathi-wathi youths were ready along the Murray, messengers went out carrying the poopanderi, a disc of plaited opossum fur that no woman, child, or uninitiated youth was allowed to see. At the Burbung ground the novices' feet were planted in filled-in holes to stop their struggling, and a practised man drove a small wooden wedge between the teeth with a mallet before the tooth was knocked out. All the while a man hidden in the scrub whirled the Kalari round his head — an instrument credited with a wonderful magic influence, and after the ceremony given to some unmarried man to carry about or hide in a safe place. Cameron had the whole account from Makogo, a Wathi-wathi man. Everything touching the Burbung was sacred: a woman found prying into its mysteries would be severely punished, probably killed.

This instrument is supposed to have a wonderful magic influence. By the Wathi-wathi it is called Kalari.

A. L. P. Cameron, 'Notes on Some Tribes of New South Wales,' Journal of the Anthropological Institute 14 (1885), p. 359
Object
Humming instrument whirled round the head by a man concealed in the scrub; Cameron records no dimensions or form.
Function
Whirled by a concealed man during the tooth-knocking of the Wathi-wathi Burbung; held to have a wonderful magic influence; kept afterwards by an unmarried man. Bora secrets closed to women on pain of death.
Map confidence
high - Wathi-wathi territory centroid on the Murray around Balranald/Tooleybuc; Howitt places the tribe near Balranald.
Source location
Page references

printed pp. 357-360 (Kalari at p. 359)

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